Passionate about financial wellbeing, global recruitment firm Hays provides employees with back-to-basics roadshows and webinars to explain pensions terminology in a more straightforward way in order to combat the gender pensions gap.
It has offices in 33 countries and 13,000 employees across the world. Of these, 3,500 are based in the UK.
Since 2017, the firm has given employees practical examples of what a defined contribution (DC) fund could look like in future years depending on their contribution levels and investment outcomes, and what lifestyle might be open to them when they reach retirement. Today, this has progressed to quarterly bespoke presentations from its pension provider to younger employees to introduce them to pension savings early in their career, as well as refresher sessions for older members of its workforce. This is to highlight the impact of the gender pensions gap and work to avoid it.
One of Hays’ recent actions has been to trial some retirement coaching sessions aimed at employees aged over 50 to encourage them to think about their skills, how they want to spend their retirement years and what steps they need to take now to do this, says Rosemary Lemon, group head of reward at Hays. The coaching was held over two sessions, each lasting two hours, with external coaches.
“As people live longer, retirement could mean a potential 20 to 40 years of having a different life outside of employment and it is important to be prepared,” explains Lemon. “This includes taking appropriate steps early to enable that transition, being mentally prepared and covering the financial planning to support their aspirations. Employees who attended thought the course was thought provoking, and a wake-up call, and enjoyed that they could share their thoughts with other people at a similar stage of life via breakout sessions. The course ended with people having determined a few personal action items to start to turn their future retirement plans into reality.”
Hays’ approach acknowledges it is important to start to save for retirement as early as possible but recognises that it can be hard to think of retiring in 40 years’ time if employees are at the start of their working life. It aims to provide easy explanations about employer matching contributions to bust the myth that pensions are difficult to understand, and also uses terms such as pension savings rather than schemes or plans, to avoid sounding too formal.
Kath Bedford, pensions manager at Hays, says: “The traditional separate three-stage approach to our lives, education, work and retirement, has changed. As we are living longer and healthier lives and now expect more variety and vitality in our retirement years, it’s vital that we start assessing and planning for our needs and wants in order to reach our aspirations for our world of retirement.”
The firm plans to keep communicating and has an open-door approach to any employee who wants to talk about pension, at whatever stage of life or situation they happen to be in.
“At the moment, life can be particularly hard with high costs of living. Putting aside money for the future that is tied up without access can be hard to prioritise when there are other pressing expenditures. Employees who have more ability to save need to understand the impact of annual allowances, while others need to understand the impact on their retirement years if they stop contributing, for whatever reason. Life is about balance and, while a pension is important, so is today,” Lemon concludes.